Rob Zaleski: Everyone laughs while chronic wasting looms
 

By Rob Zaleski
November 25, 2006

Earlier that day, Stauber says, the Legislative Audit Bureau reported that the Department of Natural Resources' $27 million plan to thin the state's deer herd in an attempt to eradicate chronic wasting disease has been a flop. And Stauber, director of the Madison-based Center for Media & Democracy, says most of those waiting in line to purchase deer hunting licenses were "laughing and ridiculing the DNR."

"They saw this as another public funding fiasco where know-nothing game managers are wasting money and interfering with the activity of sportsmen," Stauber surmised in an interview last week.

Stauber has similar disdain for the agency - but for different reasons. He believes the DNR needs to take far bolder action if it's ever going to slow the spread of CWD and, even more important, prevent it from possibly spreading into people.

"I'm not saying it is spreading into people. I'm not saying it will spread into people. But there's absolutely no reason why it couldn't spread into people," says Stauber, who co-authored a 1997 book ("Mad Cow USA") about the Mad Cow disease crisis in Great Britain, where more than 100 people died from a human form of the disorder after eating infected beef.

Stauber's been sounding the alarm about CWD since the fall of 2001 - several months before it was first discovered in Wisconsin in three deer that were killed near Mount Horeb. In 2003, as the disease continued to spread, he suggested in this space that the DNR take five major steps to keep it in check. None were adopted.

In fact, not only has the DNR ignored his advice - "I'm a public relations problem to them, not somebody whose brain they might tap," he suggests - but it ran ads on area radio stations in the fall of 2002 that poked fun at anyone who feared contracting the disease by eating venison.

Since then, two studies have come out that should make every hunter shudder, Stauber says.

One, by scientist Glenn Telling of the University of Kentucky, found that infectious prions have been found in the thigh muscles - a part of the animal that people commonly eat - of CWD-stricken deer.

The other, by researchers at Colorado State University, showed that infected deer can spread CWD to healthy deer through their blood and saliva.

"And that's really stunning," Stauber says. "It means there's no way anyone knows of to stop the spread of CWD."

If all that weren't disturbing enough, the British government has reported that at least two people who died of Mad Cow disease in that country were infected through the blood supply, he notes.

So where does the DNR go from here?

"They should go back to the drawing board and erase all the garbage, all the convoluted, illogical talking points that are up there," Stauber says. "Then they should start over and list stopping infected deer from entering the human food supply as their No. 1 goal. Period."

And there's only one way to do that, Stauber maintains: By testing every deer that's killed in the state and keeping every deer that tests positive for CWD out of processing plants and slaughterhouses.

"There are some good, rapid tests that have been developed with cattle that are cheap and easy to use," he says. "Somebody would have to investigate whether those tests are applicable to deer. And if they're not, the state would have to put money into developing an applicable test."

But these aren't big hurdles, Stauber says. And had the DNR taken this approach when CWD was first discovered here, the system would already be in place.

"But they haven't even considered this because the position they've taken is one of downplaying and ridiculing the human health threat. And frankly, the most cynical analysis of the DNR's intent has been borne out. Which is, bottom line, all they really care about is killing deer and managing the deer herd and selling licenses and pretending that there's no problem."

Sad fact is, "they've got no real plan ... and they've got egg on their face in front of the public," Stauber says. "So this train is wrecked, it's off the tracks, it's burning.

"And it's hard to speculate what the hell they're thinking at this point."